2006-08-01

When people roll out maps, you know you are in trouble... here is a perfect example not only of that but also of the intellectual brilliance of such an idea. A recent article of the Armed Forces Journal called "Blood borders. How a better Middle East would look" proposed a new map for the Middle East (no, I am not a regular reader o fthe Armed Forces Journal, I came accross it thanks to Carl Bildt's Blog).This map (the article discloses the mind-set of the author: 'Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works'.).has such great ideas such as Greater Lebanon (in fact todays Lebanon is already Greater Lebanon), Greater Jordan (making a functional state even more functional), Saudi Homelands Independent Territories (the term homeland is particularly well chosen).There is really only one map in recent years which has proposed some decent borders, and is based on more serious research than the above:

Mostly Belgrade is a perfectly pleasant place to live in and the down-sides are made up by the up-sides. Here is one of the down-sides to most other places: Indicted war criminals. It just does not really make my day, as just a few days ago, when I parked the car and had to see Nikola Sajnovic going to church (my fault for parking next to Sveti Save one could argue). Good news, he had to go back to the Hague the next day. A few years ago I had my lunch at the otherwise wonderful Grmec ruined by the company of Aleksandar Pavkovic. Unfortunately, I have not yet seen any of the war criminals for which I could get 5 mio. $ and retire.